Growth and public infrastructure

The paper analyzes a multicountry extension of the Barro model of productive public expenditure. In the presence of positive infrastructural externalities between countries, the provision of infrastructure will be inefficiently low if countries do not coordinate. This provides a role for a supranational body, such as the European Union, to coordinate the policies of the individual governments. It is shown how intervention by a supranational body can raise welfare by internalizing the infrastructural externality. Infrastructural externalities increase the importance of tax policy in the growth process and distribute the benefits of taxation across countries.

Assessment of evaluations made to healthy eating policies in Europe: a review within the EATWELL Project

Objective: To identify and assess healthy eating policies at national level which have been evaluated in terms of their impact on awareness of healthy eating, food consumption, health outcome or cost/benefit. Design: Review of policy documents and their evaluations when available. Setting: European Member States. Subjects: One hundred and twenty-one policy documents revised, 107 retained. Results: Of the 107 selected interventions, twenty-two had been evaluated for their impact on awareness or knowledge and twenty-seven for their impact on consumption. Furthermore sixteen interventions provided an evaluation of health impact, while three actions specifically measured any cost/benefit ratio. The indicators used in these evaluations were in most cases not comparable. Evaluation was more often found for public information campaigns, regulation of meals at schools/canteens and nutrition education programmes. Conclusions: The study highlights the need not only to develop harmonized and verifiable procedures but also indicators for measuring effectiveness and success and for comparing between interventions and countries. EU policies are recommended to provide a set of indicators that may be measured consistently and regularly in all countries. Furthermore, public information campaigns should be accompanied by other interventions, as evaluations may show an impact on awareness and intention, but rarely on consumption patterns and health outcome.

Policies to promote healthy eating in Europe: a structured review of policies and their effectiveness

This review provides a classification of public policies to promote healthier eating as well as a structured mapping of existing measures in Europe. Complete coverage of alternative policy types was ensured by complementing the review with a selection of major interventions from outside Europe. Under the auspices of the Seventh Framework Programme's Eatwell Project, funded by the European Commission, researchers from five countries reviewed a representative selection of policy actions based on scientific papers, policy documents, grey literature, government websites, other policy reviews, and interviews with policy-makers. This work resulted in a list of 129 policy interventions, 121 of which were in Europe. For each type of policy, a critical review of its effectiveness was conducted, based on the evidence currently available. The results of this review indicate a need exists for a more systematic and accurate evaluation of government-level interventions as well as for a stronger focus on actual behavioral change rather than changes in attitude or intentions alone. The currently available evidence is very heterogeneous across policy types and is often incomplete.

Recreational access to private land in England and Wales: public good; private interest

Since the Eighteenth Century the protection of public recreational access to private land has been maintained by the state through a mixture of legal rights of passage and the safeguarding of certain de facto access rights. While this situation has been modified in the last fifty years to facilitate some formalisation of access arrangements and landowner compensation in areas of high recreational pressure and low legal accessibility, recent policies indicate that a shift from public to private rights is underway. At the core of this paradigm shift are the new access payment schemes introduced as part of the restructuring of the European Common Agricultural Policy. Under these schemes landowners are now paid for 'supplying' recreational access, with the state, as the former upholder of citizen rights, now assuming the duplicitous position of further underwriting private property ownership through the effective commodification of access, while simultaneously proclaiming significant improvements in citizens' access rights.

Public sector applications of the system dynamics approach

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Carmine Bianchi on understanding public sector from different levels and perspectives, one by Mauro Lo Tennero on the aspiration and structure of Sicily to enforce public policy, and one by Nuno Videira and colleagues on the use of group model building in the public sector to concur sustainable policies.

Can nutrition be promoted through agriculture-led food price policies? A systematic review

Abstract Objective: To systematically review the available evidence on whether national or international agricultural policies that directly affect the price of food influence the prevalence rates of undernutrition or nutrition-related chronic disease in children and adults. Design: Systematic review. Setting: Global. Search strategy: We systematically searched five databases for published literature (MEDLINE, EconLit, Agricola, AgEcon Search, Scopus) and systematically browsed other databases and relevant organisational websites for unpublished literature. Reference lists of included publications were hand-searched for additional relevant studies. We included studies that evaluated or simulated the effects of national or international food-price-related agricultural policies on nutrition outcomes reporting data collected after 1990 and published in English. Primary and secondary outcomes: Prevalence rates of undernutrition (measured with anthropometry or clinical deficiencies) and overnutrition (obesity and nutrition-related chronic diseases including cancer, heart disease and diabetes). Results: We identified a total of four relevant reports; two ex post evaluations and two ex ante simulations. A study from India reported on the undernutrition rates in children, and the other three studies from Egypt, the Netherlands and the USA reported on the nutrition related chronic disease outcomes in adults. Two of the studies assessed the impact of policies that subsidised the price of agricultural outputs and two focused on public food distribution policies. The limited evidence base provided some support for the notion that agricultural policies that change the prices of foods at a national level can have an effect on population-level nutrition and health outcomes. Conclusions: A systematic review of the available literature suggests that there is a paucity of robust direct evidence on the impact of agricultural price policies on nutrition and health.

The persistent challenge of encouraging public participation in the low-carbon transition

In order to address the growing urgency of issues around environmental and resource limits, there is a clear need to develop policies that promote changes in behavior and the ways in which society both views and consumes goods and services. However, there is an argument to suggest that, in order to develop effective policies in this area, we need to move beyond a narrow understanding of ‘how individuals behave’ in order to cultivate a more nuanced approach that encompasses behavioral influences in different societies, contexts and settings. In this opinion article we therefore draw on a range of our own recent comparative research studies in order to provide fresh insights into the continued problem of how to engage people individually and collectively in establishing more sustainable, low-carbon societies.

Agricultural policies exacerbate honeybee pollination service supply-demand mismatches across Europe

Declines in insect pollinators across Europe have raised concerns about the supply of pollination services to agriculture. Simultaneously, EU agricultural and biofuel policies have encouraged substantial growth in the cultivated area of insect pollinated crops across the continent. Using data from 41 European countries, this study demonstrates that the recommended number of honeybees required to provide crop pollination across Europe has risen 4.9 times as fast as honeybee stocks between 2005 and 2010. Consequently, honeybee stocks were insufficient to supply >90% of demands in 22 countries studied. These findings raise concerns about the capacity of many countries to cope with major losses of wild pollinators and highlight numerous critical gaps in current understanding of pollination service supplies and demands, pointing to a pressing need for further research into this issue.

Concessionary nature of public-private partnerships in Russia and Kazakhstan: a critical review

This article provides a critical overview of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Russia and Kazakhstan and examines the rationale underpinning such partnerships. The analysis discusses the reasons why governments in Russia and Kazakhstan focus principally on concessions as a form of PPP and goes on to provide a critical assessment of the key approaches and situational factors relating to concessions in these two countries. The article finds that external globalization impulses pressed Russia and Kazakhstan to align their policies and institutions with western orthodoxy and perceived international best practice. An ever-increasing emphasis on use of PPPs has been a key feature of this alignment. However, the governments of Russia and Kazakhstan have increasingly resorted to concessions as progress with the development and implementation of Western style PPP models has stalled. This article concludes that the governments of Russia and Kazakhstan have demonstrated an overly optimistic approach to PPP and as a result may have substantially understated their overall concessional risks and costs. Features of Russian and Kazakhstani PPP arrangements such as ambiguity in output specification and extensive reliance on government subsidies, combined with lack of expertise of private partners, may significantly decrease concession benefits.